


Revelation

by RurouniHime



Category: CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
Genre: Angst, Child Abuse, Confessions, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-22
Updated: 2011-07-22
Packaged: 2017-10-21 15:48:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/226886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RurouniHime/pseuds/RurouniHime
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was easier, knowing what he knew ten minutes ago.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Revelation

**Author's Note:**

  * For [geekwriter143](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=geekwriter143).



> Warning: spoilers for Overload, reference to past molestation of a child.
> 
> Dedicated to geekwriter143, because it was a scene in one of her fics that made me stop and think about what Greg's reaction to Nick's past might be, and my own interpretation of it.

**Revelation**

 

Nick had been looking at him steadily – or not so steadily – for the past ten minutes. Greg felt he should be elated; Nick Stokes had just answered the unfathomable questions of why a grown man without a streak of soot darkening his sunshiny past could look at a random child and get nothing but unhappiness out of the sight. Greg knew Nick liked kids, so he’d been curious about the strange and occasional sorrow, and he himself had never felt foreboding just from looking at a kid, but now he couldn’t see _why not._

God, the possibility was always there, wasn’t it? Lurking, lurking.

 _So I don’t like Bugs Bunny,_ Nick’d said, nodding to himself. _And I don’t like long pajamas because that’s what I wore back then._

And that explained the less-than-stellar reception of Greg’s present last Christmas. He’d been hoping Nick would wear silk. It felt oh so good against naked skin, especially when it was his own naked skin.

Greg shifted, feeling Nick’s thigh heavy across his. They stretched on the small couch, him at one end, his lover at the other, their legs crisscrossing and overlapping in the middle. Nick’s hand drifted just near enough to his foot that Greg knew the other man would rather be touching it, but wouldn’t do so.

And maybe Greg was being the selfish one, but he just didn’t _get_ it.

How did one go about touching one’s lover after hearing that? Greg longed to touch. It was comfort Nick needed, the best sort of comfort, but even that was not enough to galvanize his hands and arms and mouth and body into action. He stared at Nick’s hand, so close to his foot, and felt the air growing steadily denser. Every moment it didn’t happen formed another shadow across Nick’s face.

Greg knew it was a show of trust, what Nick had done. He just wished Nick hadn’t done it with risotto and a piece of carrot cake, and then sat on the couch and tangled himself up with Greg and told him, as if it were the score of a basketball game or his schedule at the lab for the next week.

But that calm was fading now, wasn’t it? Greg forced the weird smile down – “smile” definitely wasn’t the right word but it was the closest he could come to naming the expression on his own face – and looked at his hands. That was his fault, too, the longer he stayed silent, the less calm Nick would become.

But that was hard to put into perspective, considering that this was the absolute last thing Greg had expected to find out tonight. A home-cooked meal and a movie, not in that order, and then the couch that swallowed him on a regular basis, and a smiling boyfriend who, up until ten minutes ago, had seemed pretty damned carefree. And that was just a big fat lie, wasn’t it?

A nice, safe evening, during which Greg had expected to laugh about the new fingerprint tech at work, or maybe hear about that independent film on penguins that Nick had been so keen on lately, turned into this.

What was common procedure? He wished Grissom were here to tell him because, damn it if _he_ knew.

“Well. You don’t need to look at me like I’m contaminated,” Nick said shortly.

“I… You’re not contaminated. I’m not. Looking at you like that.”

Nick straightened on the couch, drawing his legs free of Greg’s and lowering his bare feet to the floor. Said nothing.

Greg wanted a blanket, something to wrap tightly around himself to keep the ensuing cold out. He wanted to wrap Nick tightly around himself. But he’d done that already, many times. Nick had been the one to wrap himself around Greg, but now there was just cold, and words, deeds, hanging beside them in the room.

The tendons in Nick’s forearms knotted and released as he kneaded the material of his jeans. The plate full of carrot cake crumbs sat on the side table by the couch, two forks gleaming. Nick leaned over, back curling as he settled his elbows on his knees. His shirt, worn thin from nights and nights of sleeping in it, stretched snugly over his skin, over lean muscle and solid frame.

And, _oh my lord,_ he’d just been perfectly fitted against that body yesterday – it had been the first time in their single year together that Nick had pulled him on top, and Greg had known it would be uncomfortable for his lover, and he’d made certain to make it good, and he’d known Nick liked it as well.

But what the hell did he “know,” anyway? He hadn’t known about this.

And that just brought everything they’d done into question. Didn’t it.

What if he’d hurt Nick? What if some stroke of his fingers inside Nick’s body or roll of his hips against trembling flesh – perhaps something he’d already done for months, ignorantly – was something _she’d_ done? Maybe he’d mistaken the light that flowered in Nick’s eyes when he wrapped his hand tightly and stroked him.

When he’d eased slowly forward, taking as careful measure of Nick’s gasps as he could. He could remember the way Nick’s teeth imprinted his own lower lip as clearly as if he were still in their darkened bedroom looking down at his lover.

Remember the way he’d kissed that imprint of teeth away. The way Nick had _kissed_ back.

“Say something,” Nick muttered, and Greg looked very hard and very frantically for the words he was supposed to be saying.

“You… never said anything about it,” he managed at last. Nick looked at him mutely, head turned towards him as he leaned over his knees. Greg realized his choice of words wouldn’t get a response because there wasn’t one for such a statement. He looked down. Played with the fringe of the blanket draped over the back of the couch.

He wanted to touch Nick, so badly. Wasn’t sure if he should. Wasn’t sure if he _could_.

“Why?” he whispered at last, and wondered which ‘why’ Nick would answer.

The older man shrugged, looking at the far wall fixedly. “I was ready to tell you.”

It struck home again, how little his own knowledge of events had played into their actual existence. Greg’s mind threatened to reel. He hadn’t noticed Nick brooding over anything in particular. Was he that unobservant? Was Nick that good at concealing?

Could Nick be concealing other things?

Greg wished for the first time in their relationship that their sex life had not progressed so far. Because that was what he thought they were doing, progressing, but now he wasn’t sure what had been happening.

Nick shifted, and the gap between them widened. “So, you know.”

A lost sentence, meant to be attached to something else equally as lost. Greg reached forward instinctively, and drew his hand back just as instinctively. Nick’s gaze flickered after the movement, and rose to meet his.

“Greg?” A hand stretched out, a familiar hand, and closed over his own. Greg felt the reassurance of that grip. Shook with it, knowing now how fragile it really was. How much had he contributed to that? A whole year, and he hadn’t known. Had acted without knowing.

His hand lay there limply under Nick’s, and Greg hated it for doing so, but he didn’t want to do any more damage. It seemed absurd that he could move without doing something wrong, and equally absurd that he should think that way. This was Nick. He’d always wanted Nick. Never had a problem finding an excuse to touch Nick.

He’d made love to the man, for god’s sakes, and _now_ he found it hard to deal with contact between them? It overwhelmed him suddenly, the equal need to both touch and not touch the man sitting beside him.

“You have to tell me what to do, Nick,” he whimpered at last, too terrified at their distance, feeling the stretch between their bodies.

Nick’s face contorted and dampness glimmered in the corners of his eyes. He stood from the couch slowly. “You always knew what to do, Greg.”

“No.” He reached out. Grabbed soft cotton and gripped, and Nick stopped. “Nick, you have to remind me. Please?”

Nick stared at him. “Why?”

Why? _Why?_ Oh god, because he didn’t want to be that nightmare. Because he hated that girl more than anyone else he’d ever known, and he’d never even met her. Suddenly Nick’s body was nothing but a winking map of painful points and torn, too-lucid memories, and Greg couldn’t _not_ see it, and he didn’t know how to touch the man he loved anymore for fear of igniting one of those sparks of past agony.

His fingers clutched, and Nick’s eyes flicked down at them. Up.

Awareness, unexpected and swift.

“Oh, Greg, you’re not her.” Nick’s voice was soft, clipped around the edges, and so weary.

“I’m…” Greg fell into silence, fell into embarrassment. It was one of those empty spaces where no thought in the world would ever be voiced correctly, no words were worthy of his own idiocy. Nick’s hand shivered as if it would draw away, and then fingers tightened almost painfully around Greg’s.

“Stop it.” Nick said quietly.

“Stop what?”

“Stop thinking that. Greg? That’s not why I told you about it.”

Greg looked up mutely and found familiar dark eyes gazing into his, and they were still the same eyes, only now Greg had a name for the depth he’d witnessed there time and again. He felt it kick through him in short, sharp bursts. Knew he could never leap back in time to wrench it out, erase it, and didn’t like the helplessness of that reality at all.

“You aren’t her.” Nick’s thumb rubbed over his knuckles. “You touch every place she didn’t touch.”

Greg looked at him. “How do you know the difference?”

“I know because every time I feel you… touching me… I love you. It. M…” He swallowed. “Myself.”

It had never occurred to him that Nick Stokes might not love himself. And he wasn’t sure why, because there were things that made Greg not love _him_ self, but he’d never spoken them aloud to Nick because he knew his lover would scoff at it all. Tell him it was ridiculous, that there was nothing wrong with him.

And abruptly Greg saw, as if he’d been kicked right in the head, that he’d been going about this all wrong, and he had better get Nick’s body into his arms within the next five seconds, and yes, the way he touched him might very well be a catalyst for All That Was Bad, but he wasn’t willing to risk the alternative.

“Nicky, come here.”

Three words. All it took. If Greg had known that earlier, maybe he could have actually avoided striking that tender sore in Nick that he’s been so busy avoiding. Nick’s eyes fixed on his face, ever watchful, ever deep. He came slowly across the couch with that steady grace of his, the one Greg longed to master because it was such a turn-on and such an art simultaneously, and if he could ever make Nick feel about him the way he himself was feeling about Nick right now… Oh, his life would triple in meaning.

Nick Stokes, all strength, muscle, and pride, folded himself into Greg’s arms until he was completely against him, and Greg was glad of the plushy give of the couch. He touched the nape of Nick’s neck with his fingers.

“You’re not contaminated,” he said, and the words tried to crack with shame. “I wasn’t…”

He shrugged. Nick shifted once and brought his hand up to rest over Greg’s chest.

“I thought about this for a while,” Nick murmured. “Just never seemed like the right time, I guess.”

And just when was the right time, anyway? Greg cradled Nick’s head in his hand.

“I haven’t told all that many people. Need to know basis and all that. Except I don’t think you need to know. I just…” –he gestured oddly with his fingers – “…wanted you to know.”

“You want…” Greg swallowed. “You want to talk about it?”

Nick raised his head. “Not really. It’s not exactly something I want to remember. Just thought you should… know.”

Greg nodded, feeling all gangly and awkward, and just a little useless. Of course Nick didn’t need or want to talk about it. He’d survived thirty-odd years already without talking to Greg Sanders. He’d dealt with it as much as he could and moved on, made something of himself to be proud of. It was over. And yet Nick had told him about it.

It wasn’t something Greg wanted to hear. But it was something he might need to hear. And nothing about Greg’s dilemma had anything to do with Nick’s perception of his own purity. Hell, it wasn’t even part of the question.

“You’re perfect,” he whispered, so softly that the only way he knew Nick had heard him was by the tiny catch in his breathing. “I’ve never thought otherwise.”

The other man’s eyes were full of movement, liquid and stone in the same instant. Nick’s fingers squeezed his, but he made no other move, and Greg could feel the stillness pressing upon them both.

“Will this be a problem?” Nick’s eyes held a barrier within them, wary and strong from years of building.

Greg stared back, and the truth came up slowly, like a wave crashing over the shore. “No,” he whispered. “Not that way, at least.”

Nothing, for a long heartbeat. Then Nick nodded. He sat up slowly again, but the space that had appeared before did not return, even though the physical distance was the same. Greg watched him with new eyes.

“I didn’t tell you this in order to talk about it, you know.” Nick hunched his shoulders. His cheeks colored and he looked away. “Not what I wanted for tonight.”

Greg didn’t know how to answer, and finally he settled on the obvious question. Spoke softly. “What did you want, then?”

“Well, I was hoping for sex.”

Greg nodded slowly, never dropping Nick’s gaze. “Then sex you shall have.”

Nick’s smile was overly relieved, and Greg witnessed the extremity of where they’d both gone in the last hour all over again. “Well, then that’s alright.”

He could read between the lines well enough to see and understand the truth: Mere sex wasn’t going to be enough tonight. Not for Nick, or for Greg. The difference was that though it might indeed be enough for Nick sometimes, it would never again be enough for Greg.

It would always push over that extra boundary.

The thought was a bit staggering. And then the instant passed. Greg sat up, reached, pulled Nick gradually toward him. The other man came willingly enough, settling down onto Greg’s chest with a heavy, reassuring weight. Same weight.

The idea was comforting, in an odd way: technically, nothing had changed. Greg simply knew more about it. He’d been allowed to know more.

“Nick?”

“Yeah?” On a huff of breath.

“Thank you. For… you know.”

His lover smiled down at him. “Thank _you_.”

~fin~


End file.
